Dungeon Defense Book 1 Ch 1 (Patreon)

I'm kinda fooling around with a new book idea. Love the concept, no idea if it comes out in these first few chapters. Would love some feedback if yall have some time.

A Viking Jarl named Gunnar Red-Axe dies gloriously in battle expecting Valhalla, only to have his soul intercepted by a foreign power and stuffed into a dungeon core in a fantasy kingdom called Valdros. Now trapped as an immobile crystal deep underground, he must hide his true nature—fifty years of tactical brilliance, his crisis of faith, his rage at being stolen from his afterlife—while pretending to be a mindless newborn dungeon serving masters he despises. His unique trait [Valhalla's Hall] lets him claim worthy souls killed in his domain who then can empower his creatures within his dungeon.__________________________________________________________________________

The shield wall buckled on the left, Erik's section bowing inward where Thorvald had gone down and left a gap that was filling with Saxon spears instead of Norse shields.

"Kjartan!" Gunnar's voice cut through the din without rising to a shout. "Left flank, plug the hole!"

Kjartan was already moving, dragging eight men from the reserve and shoving them bodily into Erik's section, and Gunnar watched the buckle straighten as fresh weight pushed back against the Saxon pressure.

"Bjorn, Halvar—with me."

His two best housecarls peeled off without a word, Bjorn's shield already up, Halvar loosening his sword as they fell into step behind him. They'd done this dance before, knew what it meant when Gunnar started moving toward a flank instead of holding center.

He ran along the back of his own line with his Dane axe balanced across his shoulders—four feet of ash haft and a head that could split a man from crown to chest. No shield, because the axe needed both hands to do its work, and thirty years ago Gunnar had decided he'd rather kill men than hide from them.

They hit the right flank where the line curved toward the stronghold's broken gate, pushed through their own men, and stepped into the gap between the walls.

Three Northmen in the open. Two with shields, one with an axe longer than some of the Saxons were tall.

The smart response was to hold formation and let the shield wall deal with them, but Gunnar was counting on someone being stupid.

Four Saxons broke from the line to intercept.

Bjorn and Halvar stepped wide to draw off two of them, shields crashing together in the mud, which left a spearman and a swordsman for Gunnar.

The spearman thrust first—the right weapon for fighting a man with a two-handed axe, except he didn't know how to use it against someone who'd been killing spearmen since before the boy's father had learned to walk. Gunnar stepped outside the thrust and brought the axe around in a stroke that used the full length of the haft, and the head caught the spearman across the chest and threw him sideways into his companion with a sound of mail holding and ribs giving way beneath it.

The swordsman stumbled, tried to set his feet, and Gunnar's axe came down on top of his shield and split it along with the arm beneath. The return stroke opened him from shoulder to hip before his scream finished leaving his throat.

The spearman was trying to rise, so Gunnar stamped on his ankle until something gave and left him writhing.

Behind him, Bjorn's blade punched through a throat while Halvar finished his man with methodical efficiency.

The Saxon right flank was starting to waver—they could see three men chewing into their edge while the rest of their line stayed locked against the Viking center—and their commander, some thegn in a red-dyed cloak, shouted an order that sent half the flank peeling off to deal with Gunnar's little group.

Exactly what he'd wanted. Less pressure on the center, less weight holding his line in place, and more men stepping out of formation to die.

The Dane axe was meant for this—open ground, multiple opponents, men who thought they could swarm someone without a shield. Gunnar planted his feet and let them commit, and then the axe moved in sweeping strokes that scythed through the space they needed to cross to reach him. Bjorn and Halvar held his flanks with their shields while he worked the center, and men died trying to duck under his reach, died trying to back away, died when they almost got inside his guard and he broke their knees with the haft and finished them on the ground.

The Saxon flank collapsed—not all at once, because these weren't cowards—but the ones who'd stepped out to fight were dead or dying, and the ones still in formation could see what was coming. They started backing toward the gate with their shields up, trying to retreat in order, and Gunnar let them go because chasing would just get his men killed for no gain.

He jerked his head at Bjorn and Halvar, and the three of them pulled back through their own line as it surged forward to claim the ground.

"Gunnar." Bjorn was breathing hard, blood on his shield-rim that wasn't his. "The gate."

A fresh formation was pushing out through the stronghold's ruined entrance—sixty men, maybe seventy, shields painted with a device Gunnar didn't recognize. At their center stood a man in mail that caught the morning light, red cloak snapping behind him, shouting orders that turned the retreat into something with teeth.

"That one," Gunnar said.

Bjorn grunted. "Thought so."

The new formation hit their line hard, but Gunnar's wall had held against worse in worse places. These Saxons were brave and scared, fighting to protect something behind them rather than to take something ahead, and that kind of fear made men strong for the first few minutes before it made them brittle.

Gunnar let them break themselves for a while, watching the commander from the second rank. The man fought smart—kept his best warriors on his flanks, rotated his front fighters before they exhausted themselves. He'd done this more than once.

Competent. Maybe better than competent.

Bjorn saw Gunnar's smile and laughed. "Save some for the rest of us."

"If he's worth saving, you'll know." Gunnar rolled his shoulders, felt the old ache where a Frankish spear had punched through his mail fifteen winters back. The walls had separated again, both sides gasping, the wounded dragging themselves clear. "Keep the wall. Don't follow me."

"Never do."

Gunnar stepped into the gap and walked straight toward the red cloak—not running, not charging, just walking with his axe across his shoulders like a man with all the time in the world.

The Saxon line shifted, uncertain. Some of them started forward to intercept while others held position, all of them looking toward their commander for orders.

The commander raised his hand and held them back.

Gunnar stopped ten paces away, close enough to see the man's face clearly. Younger than he'd expected—maybe thirty winters—with the kind of jaw that artists carved on statues of kings, but his eyes had seen things and done things that aged them past the rest of him.

"You're the one leading this?" Gunnar asked.

"Lord Aldric of Whitmore." The commander's Norse was better than most Saxons managed. "And you're the one they call Red-Axe."

"That's the name that matters."

Aldric's eyes dropped to the axe, tracking the length of the haft and the weight of the head and the blood still dripping from the beard of it. "You raided Eastbrook three summers past and burned the church with the monks inside."

"They wouldn't come out, so I gave them a choice."

"You're a monster."

"I'm a man standing in front of you with an axe." Gunnar shifted his weight, letting his body settle into the stance that had kept him alive for thirty years. "Your men are dying and your stronghold is burning. You can let your line hold me here while you take what's left of your people and run, or you can fight me yourself and probably die. Which is it?"

Around them, both lines had gone still—watching, waiting, the way men did when they sensed that something was about to be decided that would determine whether they lived or died.

Aldric laughed, and the sound had something broken in it.

"My wife is in that hall," he said. "My children."

Ah.

Not a commander defending a position, but a man defending his family—the worst kind of enemy, the kind that couldn't be reasoned with or scared off.

"Then let's be done with it," Gunnar said, and moved.

Aldric was good—the best Gunnar had faced in years—using his shield to absorb the axe's reach advantage by staying close, too close, inside the arc of the killing stroke. His sword was fast and probing for gaps, and he understood that Gunnar's weakness was the same as his strength: the axe needed room to work.

Gunnar gave him that fight for a while, let him think the strategy was working, let him press forward and stay close and believe that aggression was the answer.

Then he changed the rhythm.

He caught a sword-stroke on the ash haft, shoved Aldric back a half-step, and brought the head around in a short chopping stroke that cracked the man's shield when he got it up just in time.

They separated, circling, both bleeding now—Aldric from a cut on his thigh, Gunnar from a slice on his arm and another on his cheek that had passed close enough to his eye that he'd felt the wind of it.

The thought came without judgment: He's faster than he should be. Aldric was younger by two decades and moved like a man who'd kept himself sharp through constant practice. Gunnar had thirty years of experience; Aldric had thirty years of youth.

Almost equal.

Almost.

Gunnar stopped holding back.

Three strokes forced Aldric to move the way Gunnar wanted—left, then right, then back—and when his shield was out of position, Gunnar's axe hooked the top edge and ripped it aside.

The sword came up to compensate, fast and desperate and skilled, but not fast enough.

Gunnar's axe took him in the thigh hard enough to buckle the leg even through mail, and when Aldric staggered, Gunnar was already inside his guard with the haft slamming into his jaw. Something cracked, and Aldric went down on one knee with his sword arm still rising—

"LORD ALDRIC!"

The scream came from behind, and Gunnar had time to think retinue before they were on him—three men, four, five—crashing into his blind side with shields and swords and the desperate fury of men watching their lord die.

His axe took the first one in the chest, and he got his shoulder into the second one's shield to knock him back, but the third one's sword was already coming and the axe was too long and too slow for fighting this close and he couldn't get it around in time—

The blade punched through mail below his ribs on the left side, through leather, through flesh, and he twisted away and felt it tear loose and felt his legs go uncertain beneath him.

Ah.

He killed the man who'd stabbed him on reflex, the axe coming around in a stroke he'd thrown ten thousand times to open him from shoulder to hip. Blood everywhere now, some of it his, most of it not, and still two of them left, three of them, and Aldric getting back to his feet with murder in his eyes—

Gunnar buried his axe in someone's skull and left it there because there was no time to wrench it free. He drew his seax, but his left arm wasn't working right anymore and the world was starting to narrow at the edges.

The lung. It got the lung.

He could feel it—the wet heat spreading through his chest, his breath catching on something ragged inside him. Not long now. Minutes, maybe. Less if he kept fighting.

He kept fighting.

One more man went down clutching his throat, and another stumbled back with the seax in his gut. Gunnar let him keep it because his fingers weren't gripping properly anymore. He was on his knees—when had that happened?—and Aldric was standing over him with sword raised, saying something Gunnar couldn't hear through the ringing.

This one. This one was worth it.

He looked up at the Saxon lord, this man who'd fought to protect his family, who'd almost been good enough to kill Gunnar face to face. There were worse men to lose to and worse ways to die.

Gunnar smiled with blood on his teeth and blood in his throat.

The sword came down.

Gunnar was standing in the mud of the Saxon stronghold with his axe in his hand and no pain anywhere in his body, which was wrong because he remembered being on his knees with a lung full of blood and Aldric's sword falling toward his neck.

The battle was still happening somewhere behind him—he could hear the crash of shields and Bjorn bellowing orders—but it sounded far away, like a storm heard from inside a hall. The world had gone gray, the color draining out of everything except the woman walking toward him across the corpses.

She moved like light on water, her feet barely touching the mud, armored in something that looked like moonlight hammered into metal. Her face was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, the kind of beauty that made you understand why men charged hopeless battles just to earn a glance from something like her.

She stopped in front of him, and her eyes were the blue of winter skies.

"Gunnar Red-Axe." Her voice was music. "You died well."

He looked down at his hands, at his axe, at the blood on the blade already drying. "I'm dead."

"Yes."

"And you're here to take me to—" He couldn't say it, couldn't make himself believe it even now.

"Valhalla." She smiled. "The Allfather saw your death and he is pleased. Your father waits for you, Gunnar. Your brothers. All the men you've lost over the years are feasting in his hall, and there's a seat at the table with your name carved into the wood."

Fifty-three winters of fighting and bleeding and watching good men die, and it had all been for this. It had all been leading here.

"Take me," he said, and his voice held steady. "I'm ready."

The Valkyrie extended her hand.

"He's not yours to take."

The second voice was wrong—not wrong like a lie, but wrong like a word in a language he'd never heard. Gunnar turned, and the woman standing behind him was beautiful too, but her beauty made his eyes ache and his mind slide sideways like trying to look at the sun's reflection in moving water. She wore robes the color of deep stone, and her eyes were older than the Valkyrie, older than anything had a right to be.

"You overstep." The Valkyrie's hand dropped to her sword—a blade that looked like frozen lightning. "This one earned his place, and I watched him fall."

"And I'm telling you he was bargained for." The stone-robed woman smiled without it reaching her eyes. "Old One-Eye and I came to terms—this soul in exchange for considerations your master found acceptable."

"The Allfather would not—"

"Would not what? Trade a single warrior for something he wanted more?" The laugh sounded like rocks grinding together in a riverbed. "You don't know him as well as you think, shield-maiden. He's been bargaining away his children since before your grandmother's grandmother learned to hold a spear."

The Valkyrie's face went tight. "What considerations?"

"That's between your master and me." The stone-woman turned those impossible eyes on Gunnar, and he felt himself pinned in place. "This one has work to do—important work. He's earned a place above Valhalla, in mine."

"Above—" The Valkyrie stopped short, something flickering across her face. "You can’t do that to him."

"I have no choice, we are all fighting the same fight." The stone-woman extended her hand toward Gunnar. "Come. You've been chosen for something greater than drinking mead with the glorious dead."

Gunnar's grip tightened on his axe. "No."

Both women looked at him—the stone-woman's expression unchanged, the Valkyrie's softening into something that might have been pity.

"I died right." His voice cracked. "Blade in hand, blood on my axe. I earned this. My father is in that hall, my brothers, my—" He stopped because his throat had closed up, because fifty-three years of fighting for this moment and now some stone-faced bitch wanted to take it from him. "No. I won't go."

"You don't have a choice." The stone-woman's voice went gentle, which made it worse. "The bargain was struck before you were born, and your whole life has been leading to this moment. Every raid, every battle, every death you dealt—all of it was preparation, all of it was making you into what I need."

"Then unmake the bargain."

"What you want doesn't matter." The gentleness vanished. "What matters is what you are, and what you are is mine."

She reached for him, and Gunnar swung his axe.

The blade passed through her like she wasn't there, because she wasn't—not in any way that iron could touch. She caught his wrist with fingers that felt like mountain roots, her grip patient and absolute and entirely without malice.

"I admire the attempt," she said. "You'll need that spirit where you're going."

Her other hand pressed against his chest and pulled at something that felt like it should have been his heart.

"Wait."

The Valkyrie's voice cut through the pain, and the stone-woman paused with her hand still buried in Gunnar's chest.

"What?"

The Valkyrie stepped forward, and for a moment she looked at Gunnar the way his mother used to—pride and grief and the knowledge that she couldn't protect him from what was coming.

"Gunnar Red-Axe, Gunnar the Quiet, Gunnar the Sea Whisperer," she said. "Son of Erik the Bold. Husband of Sigrid. Father of Leif and Astrid and Knut." Her eyes held his. "You have earned your place in the Allfather's hall, and nothing this one does can take that from you. It will be waiting when your work is finished."

"My work—"

"Will be harder than anything you've faced. You will want to give up, and you will want to die, and you won't be able to." She reached out and touched his face with fingers cold as iron and gentle as snow. "But you are a son of the North, and we do not break. We do not bend. We endure, and we fight, and when the fighting is done, we come home. You will come home, Gunnar. Valhalla will be waiting. We will be waiting. Do not forget."

His face was wet. When had that happened?

"I don't want to go."

"I know." She stepped back, and the cold where her fingers had been was the loneliest thing he'd ever felt. "But you must. Be brave, Gunnar Red-Axe. Be worthy. And when you return to us, we will drink to your deeds until the stars fall from the sky."

The stone-woman pulled.

The world folded.

Gunnar screamed for Valhalla, for his father, for the hall he would never see—but no sound came out, and the Valkyrie was fading, and the battlefield was gone, and he was falling into darkness, into silence, into stone—

In the mud of a Saxon stronghold, surrounded by the bodies of men he'd killed, Gunnar Red-Axe died.

His crew won the battle, burned the hall and took the silver and put Lord Aldric's head on a spear as a warning to anyone who thought about following them to the coast. They looked for Gunnar's body to give him a proper burning, but somehow, in all the chaos and corpses, they couldn't find him.

Bjorn said the old bastard had probably crawled off to die somewhere private, the way wolves did. They poured mead on the ground for him and told stories of his deeds all the way home, and when they reached Norway they told his wife he'd died gloriously with iron in hand, earning his place in the Allfather's hall.

She wept. His children wept. His grandchildren, who barely remembered him, were told they came from a great man who feasted now with the einherjar, waiting for them in the golden hall.

They were wrong, but they would never know it.

Elsewhere—in a place that had never heard of Odin, in a kingdom fighting a war that Gunnar's gods had never touched—something stirred in the stone.

Something opened eyes, it didn't remember closing and tried to reach for an axe that wasn't there with hands it no longer had.